Violence Fetish
by Melkor44
Summary: When the world is screwed up, its people tend to get a little defunct as well. See the differences that arise when one Uzumaki Naruto is called to war by an urge he can't deny, and understand that the child of destiny can just as easily destroy as save. (Slight NaruTayu, now a twoshot)
1. Chapter 1

He's always been shunned for a reason. He can pretend all he likes that it's for the fox, because of the tenant that he can't help for holding inside of him, but that's simply not true. For the most part, they couldn't care less that he's the Jinchuriki of the Kyubi. The fact of the matter is that he's violent beyond all comparison, a savage child who picked fights no matter where he was. The Hokage had even taken him on a diplomatic mission, several years ago, and he'd ended up in a brawl with the Kazekage's son; it was alright, though, since they were both Jinchuriki and could take the respective beatings that their opponent had been dealing. When asked about the experience, he'd only reply that he'd made a friend because of it.

In the Academy, he reigned supreme as a fighter from the day he entered. At seven, he was beating thirteen-year-old kids who were in their last year at the school. He paid rapt attention the the practical theory and application of techniques, though little else, because he knew that it would allow him to fight better. In his time off he played video games, strategy games. From his inmate, he learned many things. Cruel, and terrible, things that would make him a better warrior; he learned of chakra auras, and how they were given off only by the most powerful of techniques. He learned of strategy, of predicting the switch and inflicting status. Most importantly, though, he learned the one thing that he already knew: your enemy can't fight if they're busy running away from you.

Though he wasn't the top of his class, as that position belonged to those children who actually gave a damn about school, he was certainly the most powerful. He was a juggernaut, one who saw little difference between an organized spar and a frenzied match to the death...but perhaps that's not fair to him. To lose would mean that there was someone better than him, and that couldn't be allowed. The chakra-less boy had fallen to him easily, his rigid stances butchered before the might of a Jinchuriki. The Hyuga boy had tried, valiantly, and was one of the few people who'd ever actually managed to land a hit or two on him; when he fought, it became clear, he was in a league of his own.

That kind of separation only grew as elemental techniques were briefly introduced in classes...until he "accidentally" set fire to Uchiha Sasuke's hair and clothing. In truth, he did it just to see what would happen. And to watch the colors, and even to laugh a little bit at the thought that an Uchiha, a supposed master of the element, would actually panic and not know what to do about it. The boy might have hated him after that, as is natural for all regular humans, but in his eyes it was still totally worth it.

He failed the graduation exam on purpose. With the way that Mizuki had been looking at him, it was clear that he had something planned out for the "class failure." He went along with it, and managed to predict the switch; Mizuki just wanted power, which was understandable from the Jinchuriki's point of view, but couldn't be tolerated. Giving the man power would mean that it was power he could've had for himself. With that in mind, he copied down the entirety of the Kinjutsu scroll and decided to deal with it later. When Mizuki had arrived, and Iruka, it hadn't been a contest; the would-be traitor was killed with relative ease, which was disappointing. How could he grow stronger when he defeated everyone he came across?

The answer, as always, was within. He went to the Kyubi, to Kurama the Son of None, for power...and the demon, as a merciful and benevolent lord, granted it to him. It was evident first in the battle against the Demon Brothers; where Sakura had hesitated, and Sasuke held back, he went to battle with a look of wild exhilaration on his face and a wordless war whoop screaming from his lips. In that instant, those seconds, it had only been himself and his enemies. When that time had passed, though, he'd stood over their bodies with a melancholic look. He'd thought, and hoped, that they would be stronger. Confronted about it later, by Kakashi, all he could say was that he did what he wanted to do.

When Zabuza had arrived, Kakashi was the one who would battle; he couldn't stand for that, and blitzed past his teacher on all fours with a joyous shout of challenge. The swordmaster might have been amazing with his signature blade, and all of his mist or water techniques, but he couldn't physically outclass the boy...so Zabuza resorted to jutsu, which he easily predicted. Dodging, he sent out a moderate Katon attack that would throw the swordsman off while making him expend more chakra. Behind it, though, was a lightning strike that would only be amplified by the water that Zabuza stood on. It had been then that the would-be assassin had been slain by a Kirigakure oinin, but the death was false. Kakashi might have been fooled, but the demon could smell the life that still clung to the man's body...so the boy stayed behind, killing the pair before rejoining his group. That was what a ninja did, wasn't it? Remove all obstacles in the way of completing the mission? Yes, yes it was.

As Gato had arrived on the bridge, Kakashi hadn't needed to explain their duty; his feral student had crouched down on hands and feet, running towards them as a growing aura of bloody red chakra had surrounded him. His laugh was cold, his teeth like knives, and he roared with all the power of a demon of hatred and rage. He was violence incarnate, in that moment, and none of the onlookers could truly say that they'd ever before seen something that looked so natural or so right. He'd been born on the battlefield, and it was his home. It was where he was safe, where he could unleash his emotions without the chance of being ridiculed by nonexistent parents or siblings. And if a man's home is his castle, then the boy was truly a king; in war, nothing could touch or faze him. He was, for real and true, the one who was destined to save or destroy the world of the shinobi.

The Chunin Exams had given him a chance to sincerely cut loose, and he fought with fervor against anyone and everyone that he could. Most of the time, he killed them. The sole exception was when he ran across a boy he knew from long ago, his first and only friend...and succinctly beat him within an inch of his life before hugging him, as warriors and brothers often do. The six of them traveled together, and when Orochimaru arrived it was not to an Uchiha and a Jinchuriki as well as a civilian-born girl, but two Jinchuriki and the second's siblings to boot. Rip, tear, kill. He regenerated. Rip, tear, kill. He regenerated. Crush him with sand, he regenerated. Cut him up into lots of itty-bitty teeny-tiny pieces, he regenerated. Burn him alive with wind and fire, he regenerated. Mitarashi Anko showed up, he retreated. Until such a time as they would cross paths again, the boy would forever be irked that there was someone who he simply couldn't kill; the thought went against everything he had ever told himself, any notion that had ever popped into his head. He was the strongest, and could not lose, so why couldn't he win?

The invasion allowed him to truly showcase just how far he'd come. His blood hummed with power, his mind filled with manic euphoria as he tore apart anyone who was in his way. He watched their liquid life drain, and his aura took its hue; he could taste the iron and the copper in his mouth, and knew it for exactly what it was: their fear, their memories, all that they might have been...and it was given to him, fuel for his fire of hate and fury and death. Their deaths were no more than tally marks, his war being one that was against all of the world. He was built for battle, crafted for it and nurtured to become the greatest warrior ever seen; he simply intended to show the world the truth of his training by ramming all his prowess through the world like a sledge hits a spike. He was proud, he was a warrior, and he was a true killer. He fought with the power of a demon behind him, as a man who defied gods he didn't believe in, and he could only smile as the corpses fell and his kill tally mounted higher. If the Hokage had been able to see him, the ancient man would have been shocked that such a devout follower of the Will of Fire was so obsessed with slaughter. The thought of another Uchiha Itachi was never too far behind him, but his better-subdued nature had always fooled those who tried to look.

His first meeting with the legendary Uchiha, the Second Coming of Madara, was certainly a lot less than what he'd hoped for. He'd spent his time fighting against a fish-man, Hoshigaki Kisame, who apparently belonged to the same order as Zabuza had prior to his death...and the blue-skinned monster had been shocked to know that the Jinchuriki had been the one to kill his former comrade. It hadn't been enough to enrage him, of course, since the entire idea of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen had been founded on absolute mistrust and dislike of one another, but no punches had been pulled; that's what made the boy's survival even more impressive, because he'd survived an onslaught from a wary S-ranked ninja. When Jiraiya had arrived on-scene, to a retreating pair of ninja and an injured Sasuke, the boy could only shrug sheepishly and say that he held them off for at least five minutes both ways of Sasuke's arrival.

His fight with Tsunade had been one of the greatest that he'd ever experienced, feeling true pain for one of the first times in his life. He'd gotten back up, leaping at her on all fours as red energy began to gather around him, and raked his newfound claws across her face. His stabs were nonlethal, to her arms or legs only, and once he discovered her hemophobia then the battle was as good as won; with a snarl, he'd flung his blood at her eyes and began his physical onslaught. It was just a mass of punches, to be sure, but any spot in the human body will become weak if it's punched enough by a teenage boy with muscle and gravity on his side. He left their fight without a single scratch, the Kyubi having already taken care of such trivial wounds. Tsunade, meanwhile, was facing broken or cracked ribs as well as a broken jaw and skull. Rather than facing Orochimaru that week later, he was stuck against the silver-haired Kabuto instead; the young man had taken his opponent mildly, and paid for it with a ripped-off face before being disembowled. That had been when Orochimaru had come to him, and he'd dared to tell everyone that this wasn't their fight to interfere with until he lost. That, of course, didn't happen...Orochimaru was weak and without arms, forced to retreat before any true battle could be done. The Jinchuriki counted it as a victory, despite his understandable melancholy mood after not getting to kill the man.

During the mission to retrieve Sasuke, everything basically went to hell as soon as he stepped out from the gates of Konoha. He left a clone to go with Shikamaru's squad and took a small platoon of clones for himself. The portly Jirobo was little more than cannon fodder to the Clone Explosion multiplied en masse, and the spider-boy Kidomaru's silk-spitting proved to be his downfall; the boy used demonic chakra to overpower and poison. Tayuya's illusions were worthless against someone who contains two spirits in one body, as one could disrupt while the other fought, but something about her made him want to keep her alive...though not to be found by Shikamaru. He killed the conjoined brothers quickly enough, using the power of the Kyubi's fiery soul to burn everything to ash save for himself and his carried prisoner. Last was Kimimaro, a soldier of bones, and the Jinchuriki child couldn't help but grin as he ripped the boy's arms and legs off; they just grew back, to be torn asunder once again...but, when that got boring, he used flames to roast Kimimaro inside of his shell-like armor.

Sasuke had awoken and headed off to the Valley of the End, the Final Valley, to await a confrontation...and so he would get one, with all the strength of a feral Jinchuriki behind it. There was great violence, with blood flowing everywhere; virtually all of it belonged to Sasuke, though the red miasma that coated his opponent could very well be taken for blood. In the end, it came down to knocking Sasuke out through the sheer power of blunt force trauma...something that he was, fortunately, very gifted at. The Uchiha was thrown back to the Konoha side of the valley and its waterfall, the side of the Shodaime Hokage's statue, as was a clone designed to "die" by exploding itself when they were found. To his credit, he didn't even hear the blast; that was how quickly and how far he'd traveled, even while carrying someone on his back.

He had made his decision that day...he was no man, no Jinchuriki, but he was himself. He was violence made flesh, the physical incarnation of the will to dominate and cause hurt in all life. He had no parents, was a Son of None just as his jailed tenant before him, and had neither friends nor ties to the world. He would not simply drive his prowess as deep into the world as he could, but wide across it as well. He would fight for the sheer sake of fighting, kill for the simple reason that it was what happened in life. It was his purpose, his destiny, and his duty. Just because he could, he would fight the world by himself and bring about his own blessed world of violent destruction. He was a ninja, but he was more than that. He was a fighter, a warrior. He was the maelstrom.

He was Naruto.


	2. Chapter 2

From the darkness, he walked into the light. From the day, he walked into the night. From the shadows he would appear, with a message for all who would hear...and it was a message that none would soon forget, four-legged and shouting with glee. His body was seemingly coated with an eternal miasma of red, and he carried no tools save for his teeth and his body; he ripped through them all as they came, the wraith that he was, and always stayed on the move as his red-haired woman-friend suggested. He was the last, he knew, and he was being hunted. He'd felt the rest of the Nine cry out in terror and fear as the life had been ripped from them, as their partners were unsealed from the bonds that held them together as a pairing, and each one made him shudder. Kurama could apparently still call out to his brethren as they wasted away, and a plan had been formed by the Biju to free themselves and return their hosts to life.

He didn't care about that, though, because he fought with all the fervor of blood and iron. As long as there was a battle waiting for him, a field where he could shed life and vindicate his existence of loneliness, he would ever be appeased. His heart burned with a desire for conflict, and the people of the world only seemed too happy to oblige him his only request. It was as if the ancient and nameless gods of war, who had been denizens of minds long left to death and dust, had blessed him...yes, they truly had. He fought each day, that he might win to fight again on the morrow. He lashed out with his hatred and his fury, his wrath and fear and grief. He was the last of the Nine, he knew, and that meant he would forever need to hide unless he desired death above all else; this was how he thought until he realized that his constant hiding and running only made less people want to find him and more people want to kill him. He was going to die in any case, so he should simply destroy all that he could.

His first strike had been against the isolated islands of Mizu no Kuni, with the aid of his Red Lady and her illusions. Those places were filled with smallfolk, common civilians and tradesmen; perhaps, if he was lucky, they would have a town militia to rouse against him before he was through. His journey, however, was to kill the Mizukage. She had seen, had committed herself to, the death of Three and the abandonment of Six. His _brother_, dead at her feet! His _brother_, cast out and left do die by the very people he sought to defend from harm! It made his blood boil to think of it, and he soon paused in his circulation to directly attack the aptly-named Kirigakure. Many would have called it a stupid move, a fool's errand, but they had never known the man from his boyhood. He had been a prankster, a trickster, one who could go about and unseen even by the most elite soldiers of Konoha. To sneak within Kirigakure's nonexistent walls had been no true problem...it had only been the Mizukage Tower that began his fun. Seven swordsmen, each one stronger than the last, tried to fight him; seven swordsmen, each one faster than the last, were slain. Kiri Anbu came, and Kiri Anbu died. His fight with the Mizukage had lasted for ten minutes, at least, and he could not deny that she was one of the strongest warriors he ever had the privilege to fight. One unlucky claw piercing through the roof of her mouth, however, was all it took to slay the Godaime Mizukage. As he left the site of death and destruction, a wreckage of flames hidden inside of a great mist, a trident rose up from the ground.

Next, he had gone to Suna. Its high, tiered, mud-and-stone walls proved to be no true obstacle, as the Crimson Woman's undying minions smashed earth and human alike. Great gouts of wind and flame, water and lightning, swept through their created chasms; in minutes, the city was overrun by the elements as he walked inside of it. While he left most of the ninja for his accomplice to deal with, he took his time in unleashing his judgement upon those who failed to keep One safe. They had failed him, for they had failed to ensure the safety of his brother, and they would pay for such. For them, for all of Sunagakure, it would mean doom and death at the hands of the last of the Nine. He ripped, tore, and killed. He spat flames like venom, cut the wind in twain, and sought to drown the desert itself with the tears of his wrathful hatred. He did not know the man who had become their Kage, but the wind-using shinobi was cut down with relative ease compared to the Mizukage...and so a second Shadow Helm was added to his collection. While his back was turned to the city of the drowned, a great obelisk rose from beneath the desert sands to cast its shadow upon the windswept plain. He cared not for it, however; he only looked forward to the next day, the next battle that was to come, and sought only to scar the world as much as he could.

Iwa stood staunchest of the three remaining major villages, though such would not be the case by the time that the day was done. The citadel was brazenly in the open, not hidden at all, and there would be great joy found in his attack...by him, of course. Truly the son of his father, he demanded that his Scarlet Flutist stay behind; this was to be his fight, alone and free. With her out of the picture, he could run wild and unleash the true rage of hell upon those who had abandoned and sold out his brothers. Four and Five were dead at the hands of the red-cloud people, because they had been betrayed by the ones who they served with honor, and there would be no forgiveness for even one of the people in such a place as evil as that. Red, and then black, had coated his body in vengeful rage. Muscle and bone followed, followed by fur, and as the ninth tail was released an aura of malice descended upon the world for the first time in twenty years; the swipe of one tail caused gales to leap up, and the roar of Kurama made volcanoes erupt with fervor unseen since the age of dinosaurs. Though the boy would want the Tsuchikage for himself, the Kyubi had free reign to slay each and every one of the remaining soldiers...and kill them it did, with stamping stomps and slamming slaps and sweeping tails. Nature itself twisted to its whims, and a peal of thunder seemed to crack the sky before a cannon of light ripped the mountains apart, and the ancient beast decided that it had done enough. The Tsuchikage was old, his bones brittle and his chakra depleting by the day, unable to even muster up a decently-powered attack before his heart was ripped out of his chest. By the time that he was gone, a great temple made of stones emerged from the ground.

Kumogakure, he decided, would suffer much the same fate as Iwa...though it would be done more quickly, more viciously, with the help of the Maroon Girl and without the influence of a demon. The village was surrounded by enormous mountains, a natural defensive structure that simultaneously locked them into place while he attacked. His offensive was one launched with the stone of their surroundings, blasts of wind and water causing landslides to come crashing down upon them from the rocky slopes; as the mountains cried out with their voices of rumbling rubble, and wind howled through the chasms created by destruction, he knew that he would bring them to their knees. They had betrayed his sister, and had exposed his brother. They had been the least kind to his siblings, and so he would be crueler to them than to all the rest of the world combined...save for the red-cloud people. He leaped from on high, gliding away before dropping down to the ozone-scented ground below; they attacked him, but only succeeded in killing their allies. He was fulfilling his purpose, his self-sworn duty, and loved it for the truth that it was. His hands rent flesh and bone, his feet locking into signs that he might cast jutsu with them instead, and his bellow of challenge was met with corpses until the Raikage came. The man was blinded by rage, though it empowered him, and his speed was clearly superior; his only mistake was in attacking the blond man rather than the ginger woman, and in his illusion-addled state he neglected to change course from impaling himself through the heart onto his opponent's arm. A fourth Shadow Helm to his collection, the boy set his sights on the minor nations and vanished from the rocky piles of debris that could no longer be called mountains. When he was long vanished from the scene, a twisting spire reached beyond sight as though it wished to pierce the heavens.

None could stand before him, nor the woman who stayed by his side. She owed him her life, and she would repay her savior with the vengeance he so desired. She had grown to love him over seven and a half years, though she knew that she would always come second in his heart to battles and wars...but she didn't mind too much. As he rampaged through the lowlands, slaughtering all people he found, she stood by him; as he avenged the last of his kin, the Seventh, she knew what was to come. The last of his siblings had been brought justice, but the last of the Nine had not. He, himself, needed to have retribution for the crimes done unto him. They moved on Konohagakure no Sato, the city and the land of his birth, for the Ninth and the Nine to have truly finished their business with the world...and in the streets, the children screamed. Among the people of Konoha there walked a demon, a boy thought dead, and he killed all he found with a smile on his face. He laughed and he roared, coated with blood that was not his own, and at last found those who might stand against him. First were his classmates, all grown up, and he had to admit that the eleven of them combined had made a decent challenge. Next on the list was Kakashi, whose Sharingan negated illusions and predicted the man's moves...but it wasn't enough to save the scarecrow when, as the raw power of lightning clashed with a vortex of hatred, his body was torn in half. Tsunade might have defeated him ten or twenty years before, but at sixty she could not match the young man's speed or strength; as the last of the five Kage fell, and the hat of the Hokage came into his posession, he knew the last thing that he needed to do: confront the red-cloud people himself. He never noticed that, as he walked away, a great tree sprang up from the ground and coated nearly all of the surrounding area in black shadows.

There had been no hope for Amegakure at the start, and there was certainly none by the end. In a scant half-hour, all that remained of the last hidden village in the world stood before him: the Six Paths of Pain, the God of Pain, and the Angel of Pain. Their battle was long, drawn out, and vicious; even with six-to-one odds, as the puppeteer of the Six Paths could not himself fight, the last Jinchuriki managed to survive. When his love had attempted to aid him, he had pushed her away...this was his fight, he spoke without words, and he needed to do it alone. If he ever hoped to see with eyes unclouded by hate, or anger, then he would need to destroy those things. He did that with his fists and his feet, his claws and his teeth, and the Paths of Pain fell after the Angel had been struck from the sky. All that remained was God, the God of Pain who wished to change the world through a sharing of suffering, but gods meant nothing in the minds and eyes of a nonbeliever like the enemy whose roar was the last thing ever experienced.

The shadows and the god were dead, and all that remained were the devil in the flesh and his loving consort. But what remained for a champion, for a man born to battle, when the only people left alive in the world were himself and the person that he could not bear to fight? The answer was simple, as it had ever been, and stared him in the face. One night, as she slept, he retrieved the Sword of Pain from its sheath. As he aligned her heart with his, he knew that he would finally be at peace; ignoring Kurama's screams of outrage, fear, and terror, he drove the blade home and killed them instantly. Such is the final tale in the story of their lives...the Biju faded into nonexistence, and humanity was rendered to nothingness. The age of humanity had ended, and the spirits of nature had returned their magic to the world. After many long years, the spirits saw fit to grant humanity life anew; that is where you, and I, come from. We are not the old people, the warriors and killers from ancient times, but peaceful and caring humans who seek to help one another. All that survives of the Ninth, or of his time, is the journal that you have now read. If you look up into the night sky, perhaps you will see him with his would-be wife...for they are the star that is ever-present in the sky, the one that shines bright so as to guide all travelers on their way. Their spirits are together in death as they were in life, burning brightly amid the darkness of their time. They were great people, and their legend will never fade from this world for as long as humans still draw breath.

They were Naruto and Tayuya, of the Uzumaki, and they will come again.


End file.
